A Strange New Life
by Fluffernutter8
Summary: T lives with some weird people. Post-series oneshot. Priya/Anthony, hints of Echo/Paul.


T lives with some weird people. There are his parents, who are mostly not weird, except that his dad has scars by his ear from when his mum yelled "Tony, you should be called a tech-heart" and then his dad gave her tweezers and she pulled the weird stars from his face. There is call-me-K, who has pretty hair and can learn stuff really fast but who he's not allowed to talk to so much because of the time he asked his dad if he could learn stuff fast too. There's Mags-with-one-leg, who is really good at stories and who teaches him a lot of the time now Addie isn't with them. And there's Echo, who has been a little weird all the way back that he can remember, but who now has Paul in her head too.

Paul was a cool guy. He had a real smile and he taught T how to shoot a gun ("Just in case, if something bad happens and your mom or someone needs saving."). A lot of the time when he was little, T thought that maybe Paul was his dad. They both had dark hair, not like his mum's, except that T's is black and Paul's was really only brown. But he's glad that he has his dad now. Their hair is really the same color and they have the same name, even though T mostly only likes being called T, and Dad is called Tony or Anthony or sometimes call-me-K and Scary Rome call him Vic. And Dad is really brave, like when he didn't even cry when Mum was pulling the stars out of his face, and he's the only one who tells T the really good stories about living in New York City and seeing the New York Yankees, The Greatest Team on Earth. So he would miss his dad if he was dead like Paul, and Echo had to talk for him. It's hard to understand what Echo is saying sometimes because she tries to talk for both herself and Paul but she doesn't do a different voice like Mum or Dad do when they read to him.

But he knows that she's trying hard from the times when she puts him to bed when his parents are having "date night," which even T knows means that they go to one of the other sleeping rooms to be loud by themselves for a while. On those nights, it's Mags who reads him his story because she's better at it and Echo who tucks him in because she has both of her legs. And Echo lies beside him like Mum usually does and she tells him about when he was born and she was the first one to hold him, because someone in her head was a doctor, so she helped his mum to get him out. And Echo tells him, "Paul says that he really wishes he got to see you grow up and he bets you would have been taller than him," or "Paul wants you to remember that even though math seems stupid, you can't get by in life with just two plus two equals fours," and "Paul wants you to know that your dad isn't always right and the Red Sox are where it's really at."

And even though it's nice to go to sleep with Echo and Paul-in-her-head, he really likes the other nights the best, the nights when his dad climbs into his bed and lets T do his really fast run right at him and he always catches him. Then the two of them lie down in the bed and Dad says, "Well, Pri, there's always room for one more," and Mum slides down beside them and wraps T in between her and Dad. And he asks them about the things that he sometimes forgets, like what the stars look like and what kind of feet dogs have. And then when he's feeling really really sleepy, he asks them to tell him the things he doesn't know about yet. What it's like to go to a store. What his Mum and Dad's mums and dads are like. What it will be like when they come out of the ground to a world where everyone is just themselves like him and where he can go to school and play games with other kids and maybe Mum and Dad will have another baby for him to play with when he comes home and they can have an adventure every once in a while.

And Mum tickles along his sides and says, "Your old mum and dad aren't enough adventure for you?" And Dad says, "T, I promise, when we get out, the world is going to be more amazing than you ever even dreamed. So what's the first thing you want to do?"

And even though T doesn't know most of the math answers Mags asks him for or what call-me-K means when she asks if his dad is ever going to load up again or why men are scum like Echo sometimes asks him if she's in an angry mood when she and Paul have a fight in her head, even though he doesn't know why his dad wasn't around for when he was little or why Addie doesn't live with them anymore or why he and his family had to start living underneath the ground, he always knows the answer to this question. "I want to go to a Yankees game. When we get out, let's go see the Yankees play. Let's take everyone."


End file.
